Debating and Discussing

I decided spur of the moment yesterday, admist discussions about the Electoral College and my realization that my kids realy know nothing about the world they live in, to assign my eighth graders a newspaper project where every week they get an article about the campaign and summarize it. I know that most won't do it but hopefully it'll get a few of them involved in what's going on and how the upcoming election will affect them. In first period, we ended up having a very long discussion about why they, as thirteen and fourteen-year-olds, they should be interested and should care who was president. We talked about policies that presidents have that will affect us- education laws, environmental laws, taxation law which, although mainly affect their parents, also affect them. But then we got onto teh discussion illegal immigrants and how illegal immigrants can't vote so why should they care. This got us onto a discussion of illegal immigration and why people immigrate and why Mexicans tend to do the more menila work and the American dream.
Anyway, this was a very long discussion and of course, you have to be INCREDIBLY careful about what you say. Usually I'm good at picking up when kids want to talk about "issues" but really just want to get me off-track but today, they were all really engaged and seemed extremely passionate about it, which seemed to make sense because a lot of it actually applied to them and their families.

Then, in fourth and sixth period, we were discussing Machiavelli. I love Machiavelli. I don't agree with nearly anything that he says but in generall, I think that what he says really rings true for a lot of people and certainly for a lot of leaders. The two main quotes that we were debating and deciding whether we agreed or disagreed with were "It is better to be feared than loved" and "The ends justifies the means". The best discussion took place in, obviously, foruth period. Most of them agreed that they wanted to be a combination of feared and loved. If you're feared than most of the things that people do for you are because they're scared but if someone loves you, they go it because they genuinely want to. I loved playing Devil's Advocate and pushing them to explain what they were thinking.

In fourth period, we were also able to talk about the quote where Machiavelli says "the only thing that prince's should learn is war and peace is just a time to breathe and get ready for the next war" (ok, so that's paraphrased, but the basic gist). This quote was interesting because we started listening things that rulers should be learned in. Students said things like history, theology, and then one kid speaks up.

Eric: How about philosophy?

Me: OK, good, philosophy. Why should they learn philosophy?

Eric: I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there.

Me: Eric, do you know what philosophy is?
Eric: No, no I don't.

Oh Eric.... :)